As I almost never comment upon current events, these blog entries have a timeless triviality. Sample the various years and see what interests you.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Ashley Sterne and the Soul

This set of articles by Ashley Sterne examines the qualities of the soul in the early 20th century and deals with the topics of introspection, temperament, psychology, and personal philosophy.

The first article, Know
Yourself, is one of Mr. Sterne's earliest essays to be republished by
colonial newspapers and labors under a weight of heavy-handed moralizing that all but crushes the humor.Perhaps this
moralizing was meant to balance some of his very light and silly submissions to
Punch from roughly the same period
(to be posted on this blog in the near future).By 1916, Mr. Sterne had come to fully appreciate that his talents were
more suited to humor than to serious social commentary; and he began to hit his
stride as one of London's best comic writers.(If you have little patience with moralizing, I suggest that you read this post from the bottom up.)

Know Yourself: A Critical Study of
You[Apr 1914]

Futile Philosophy[Nov 1915]

Why We Have Hobbies[Nov 1915]

The Artistic Temperament[Feb 1916]

My Calligraphoscope[Feb 1916]

Confession Albums[Apr 1916]

The Simple Life[Sep 1916]

Know Yourself: A Critical Study of You

By
Ashley Sterne

Frankly, good people, you interest
me. Why, I do not pretend to say. Inasmuch as the renowned Dr. Fell inspired
dislike for some reason, only to be dimly hinted at, so do you evoke my
concern, and as incomprehensibly. Now I know not what particular virtue
attaches to the ipsissima verba [the very words] of a Dutch uncle that is
denied to those of a British one, yet I believe the phrase "to talk like a
Dutch uncle" is the synonym for speaking one's mind irrespective of the
emotions that may be called up thereby in the breast of the reluctant listener.
Hence this critique of You, which, though you may regard it as unwarranted, is,
nevertheless, for your heal, and—for the matter of that—your soul, too.
Therefore let the fact that your entities have wakened an interest in me, who
am hard to please, and fastidious withal, be put to the credit of this little
account between you and me, and every incision of bistory [long, narrow
surgical knife] and cut of scalpel, whereby I shall strive to lay bare the
vitals of your vanities, albeit with the loving care of the demonstrating
physiologist—appear upon the debit. Then, when the balance is struck, be it in
your favour or mine, let us agree—in the parlance of accountancy—to write it
off, as this seems to me to be the most equable basis to right it on. Now are
you ready? Then on to the operating table with you! No, I am not giving
anesthetics for I shall require the plenitude of your attention and your
fullest consciousness. There! Now I can see you as you really are, and not as
you believe yourselves to be. But do not misunderstand me; for you are not
hypocrites in the generally accepted meaning of the word. Hypocrites, as a rule
die under the knife; but you are alive, and— bless my soul!—actually kicking.
Well, I am not surprised. Now, the point about you all that strikes me most
forcibly is that you haven't any. I see protuberances, but not what a critic
would call points. Your contours are all so many jellies turned out of the same
hemispherical mould, though—as one of you very kindly suggests— there is a
slight difference in the flavour, if not in the shape. In this particular you
vary from the ordinary jellies, of commerce, for, whatever their respective
names be, they always taste the same.

—The
"Average" Person—

And yet the commonest foible among you
all is to regard yourselves as each a little superior to the others. I do not
go so far as to say that you place yourselves in the relative positions of Napoleon
and his callowest subaltern; but you assume the "little more," and
marvel "how much it is!" A few pounds more for rent than the Smiths,
a few feet more of garden than the Browns, a trifle more elaborate cuisine than
the Robinsons, and lo! you are above the most despised unit of social
measurement—"the average." Why, judging from the number of you who
claim this higher distinction, one is forced to conclude, ipso facto, that
there is no such thing as the "average" person—or, rather, that the "above-the-average"
person is the "average" person! If, therefore, I wished to number
myself among the glorious company of eclectics, I should take as good care to
be below this hypothetical standard as you are above it. The pity of all this
striving is that its object is so very transparent. It is the people who have
nothing inside them that find the necessity for making a show outside. The
flutter of their caparisons is as the thumping of a drum, which—itself
containing nothing—nevertheless serves to rouse, when beaten, the attention of the
passersby. It has not occurred to you, I suppose, that you must be lacking in
the finer qualities of human nature if, in order to support your claim to a
pseudo-superiority, you have to resort to such threadbare devices as displaying—in
however small a way—your silver and gold, your sheep and oxen, your chariots
and horses, all for the social belittlement of the man next door! The raison
d'etre of this is that you have been wrongly taught how to assess yourselves,
the modern method being to appraise a man by what he has rather than by what he
is, the consequence being that your lives are ordered by of code of absurd syllogisms
which you fondly imagine display your strong points and conceal your weak ones.
But, to put it paradoxically, your weaknesses are your one strong point; that
is to say, that in them at least you are consistent. You doubtless know the
phrase "we all have our little failings," and have—doubtless, too—applied
it to more than one of your intimate friends. But have you ever admitted that
"we" includes yourself, and examined your failings analytically?
Well, let me do it for you.

—A
Few Failings.—

The failing of you, Mrs. A., is
that by a curious coincidence Lady B's visiting card is always the top one in
the tray. You naturally wish to convey to your visitors that you are on terms
of the closest intimacy with the only titled person within a radius of five
miles. But you conceal the fact that Lady B. has merely called in the cause of
charity or a by-election. The failing of you, Miss C, is a total disability to
apply the laws of mathematics to the passing of the years. The infinity of
numbers in your opinion becomes finite at 28—a working hypothesis which you
adopted a baker's dozen of years ago, and of the truth of which, you are now
more than ever convinced. The failing of you, Mr. D., best summed up in the
words of Rudyard Kipling, which (you will doubtless note) include myself:—

'Twelve hundred million men are
spread

About this earth, and I and you

Wonder, when you and I are dead,

What will those luckless millions
do?"

Yet it is no mere petty world that
will mourn you when you are gathered to your reluctant fathers. It will be the
local council! For years you have assumed that the orderliness of the whole solar
system has depended upon your attendance at the council meeting, and the advice
which you have always been so eager to proffer, but which has never been asked
for. For a decade you have lived in a constant an ever-increasing hope of being
made a justice of the peace, and if pigheadedness, undue self-assertion, and a
total ignorance of all local matters were the only necessary qualifications,
you would not have had to await the tardy recognition of the Lord Chancellor!
You would have been from birth a J.P. by divine right. Then, again, take your
case, young Mr. E. Your little foible is to parade as a man about town, with a
nicety of taste in socks and ties which, you imagine, Piccadilly tries in vain
to copy—with disastrous results to Piccadilly. You are manicured once a week.
You belong to the local Constitutional Club, where, to a select circle of admirers,
you attribute the state of the crops and the unrest in the Balkans
indiscriminately to the malign influence of Mr. Lloyd George. You part your sleek
hair amidships and use aggressively scented brilliantine. You refer to
actresses by their Christian name, and to royalty by the nicknames. Your
conversation is interlarded with allusions to polo at Hurlingham, pigeon
shooting at "Monte," the royal enclosure at Ascot, the stalls at
Covent Garden, and Lord Dash's yacht at Cowes. And yet, when I look in at the local
branch of the London and Suburban bank to demand my passbook it is you, young Mr.
E., who hand it over the counter to me!

—Genuine
virtue.—

But happily there are some of you
who exhibit peculiarities which, though at first sight they appear to be failings
are on closer examination real, genuine virtues. You, Dr. F. have the reputation
of being gruff and brusque with your patients; of picking only the wealthy ones
for your personal attention, and of assigning your side-street clientele to the
ministrations of your qualified, yet raw, assistant. But was it not you, Dr. F.
who sat up all night in a squalid attic while a little child held your great
hand in her fever-weakened grasp, fearing that if you moved you would wake her
from the first natural sleep she had had for days! Is it not also true that you
omitted to send in your bill, throwing away the Squire's guineas for a humble woman's
thanks? And there is you, Miss G.—withered old maiden lady that you are!— who
is referred to in the same breath as being the wealthiest and stingiest person
in the district; whose name never figures in the charity subscription list;
whose patronage none dares ever canvass for the big bazaars and fetes which the
church you attend is constantly organising? Is it not you, old Miss G., who
prefer that your charity shall be done by stealth (lest, finding it fame, it
shall cause you to blush), and that your kindly identity should be hidden 'neath
that elusory cognomen "Anonymous?" Was it not you, dear, faded, but
ever blooming soul, who, during the cruel winter of a few years ago refused the
rents of your poorer tenantry (who provide 'the bulk of your well-nigh five-figure
income) by instructing your old family solicitor "to forget to call."
O, gruff, yet good, Dr. F.! O grey, yet golden, Miss G.! Would that all the world's
deceit were as honest as yours!

—"Know
Then Thyself."—

And now I hear you cry, "Hold!
Enough!" So be it; I will be merciful, much as I should like to refer to
you, fair ladies, who are ignorant of the fact that when you stand in the light
the powder upon your cheeks and noses is distinctly visible; and to you, good gentlemen,
who minister to the needs of your womenkind insofar as to pay them a handsome
dress allowance, but yet forget to pass them the mustard. But before I lay down
this caustic pen I should like to draw your individual attention to the fact
that, whereas you are eaca aware of the others' faults, you are ignorant of
your own. This is very curious, very human; but the explanation is not far to
seek. Unsuspected in you all is the tendency to look "at," not to
look "in;" to observe your friends' foibles at the neglect of
observing your own. You naturally quote Pope to me, and say that "the
proper study of mankind is man" and how are you to study man if your time
is occupied in examining the minutae of your own selves? Well, you might quote
the poet more fully in solution of your difficulty:—"Know then Thyself.
...The proper study ofmankind is man."From which you will gather that to know Yourself
is the first essential towards acquiring the faculty for knowing and
criticising others. Do not think that this introspection and analysis of
yourself necessarily implies egotism. A correct valuation of You is a duty
owing to the community, and a proper association of yourself will not cause
others to deduce conceit so long as you keep your appreciation with the rest of
your archives. It is the flaunting of yourself in the faces of others that is
the red rag to the bull, and who can blame the bull if he use the only means
bestowed upon him by Nature for taking the rise out of the red rag waver? Not
I, for one.

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Futile Philosophy

By
Ashley Sterne

While I was writing to you some
time ago on the subject of what to do with pessimists [cf. Pessimists, August
1915] I could not help thinking of the man who got full marks for pessimism
every time. I refer to the German philosopher Schopenhauer. To show you how
pessimistic he was I need only state that the gloomiest funeral you can possibly
imagine would be a rollicking picnic compared to a day spent in Schopenhauer's
society.

This will naturally cause you to
wonder why a man of pessimistic tendencies voluntarily chooses the profession
of philosopher when there are so many far more engaging pursuits that would
tend to cheer him up a bit. You cannot conceive a youth just leaving school
imploring his father that he may be allowed to spend the remainder of his life
shut up in the boot-cupboard under the staircase while he contemplates upon
whether or not time and space really exist.

You would naturally conclude that,
even if his request were granted, the embryo philosopher, after remaining in
this boot-ridden solitude for twenty minutes past his usual dinner-hour, would
have solved. the problem in the affirmative as far as meal-times were
concerned, and that when he had bumped his head 257 times against the various
projections and inclined planes that are common to all under-stair boot-cupboards
he would have been able to supply a negative—and possibly profane—answer in
respect to the existence of space in cramped quarters.

But the fact remains that many men
devote their entire lives—from perambulator to bath-chair—to considering
abstruse problems whose solutions don't seem to matter one way or the other.
For instance, one great philosopher whose name will ever be remembered (though
for the moment I have forgotten it) did actually write a book proving that time
and space did not exist. So far so good; we will agree with him for argument's
sake that they don't exist, But neither you nor I are going to alter our mode
of life in consequence. We shall still employ the usual honeyed words to the
cook when she sends up our bacon and eggs ten minutes behind schedule, in spite
of the fact that we've just agreed that time is both as extinct as the dodo and
as unborn as the unicorn. We shall still continue to regard the intrusion of a
very stout person on to our side of the railway carriage as a personal affront,
in defiance of our expressed conviction that space doesn't exist, and that
consequently we were just as crowded and uncomfortable before the stout person
came in.

And I suppose that even the great
philosopher himself occasionally found himself up the pole, as it were, with
his philosophy. I cannot conceive that he never consulted his watch nor his
study clock merely be. cause he had proved that since there wasn't any tempus
it couldn't possibly fugit. Again, I cannot conceive that he invariably went
without his dinner on the theory that there was not any space to put it in.
These little fallacies are the great drawbacks which prevent the study of
philosophy from ever becoming as popular as picture-palaces. A man spends
twenty years in investigating and proving to his own satisfaction that all
wrong is right, or that all black is white; and at the end of that time he has
his house burgled, or upsets the ink-pot over his dress shirt, with the result
that all his theories go bankrupt, and he spends days in urging the police to
run the evil-doer to earth so that he may be prosecuted with the utmost rigor
of the law, or in rubbing his ruined linen with slices of lemon over a tub in
the back kitchen.

The truth is that the average man
doesn't care a row of pins for even the most expensive kind of philosophy if it
doesn't philosoph some thing that he can appreciate without getting a
dictionary and a headache, He doesn't mind whether matter is caused by molecules
in motion or by prawns in aspic. It is of infinitely greater importance to him
to know whether he can safely start house-keeping on £200 a year. While, as for
the average woman, she is quite content to leave the riddles of the universe to
solve themselves.

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Why We Have Hobbies

By Ashley Sterne

It is a curious fact that many men who in their own
professions show no marked degree of proficiency nevertheless exhibit
considerable talent in some side-line wherein their energies are not invoked to
earn an income, but rather to assist in its expenditure. I know a solicitor,
for example, who, notwithstanding his legal shortcomings, has spent a small
fortune in becoming a fine performer upon the ocarina as one could wish to
hear. A doctor, too, of my acquaintance, whose diagnosis of the most popular
and simple ailments is frequently contradicted by the verdict of a coroner's
jury, is an expert fretworker, and specimens of his handiwork are to be found,
in the shape of hanging-brackets and photograph frames, in the homes of nearly
all his surviving patients. Again, I know a clergyman, whose somewhat unnecessarily
lurid views on the ever absorbing topics of hell and eternal punishment have
served to keep his offertory-plate as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard, who is
a recognised authority upon the rearing of pumpkins. Indeed, his monograph on
"The Pumpkin In Sickness and in Health" has long been regarded as the
standard work on this delectable though pachydermatous fruit ; while his paper,
read before the Pumpkin Growers' Association, on "How to Distinguish
between Pumpkins and Footballs" earned for him the association's gold
medal, and secured for him the reproduction of his photograph in the Special
Pumpkin Supplement of the "Fruit World."

In fact, I can think of far more men who are successful in
the prosecution of their hobbies than of those who claim distinction in their
legitimate callings. This is doubtless due to the fact that most men are required
to decide the nature of their future careers at a time when they are least
fitted for the task of selection. The youth of sixteen just leaving school
naturally wants to become a schoolmaster, and to experience the ineffable joy
of keeping in on Wednesday and Saturday half holidays another generation whose
inability to cope with the alluring mysteries of the predicate, or to name
correctly the year in which Queen Anne attained the most distinguished feature
of her reign, is no less marked than was his own. This, of course, is a staggering
blow to the fond parent who has been hoping for the last few years that the boy
would display some singular aptitude for one of the most lucrative professions,
such as company-promoting or diamond-mining ; and it is but natural that the
father should express his disappointment in terms that permit of little or no
discussion, with the result that his son reluctantly but dutifully abandons all
hope of becoming an Arnold or a Lyttelton and proceeds forthwith to study the
intricacies of selling to the public goldmines which have no gold, or
concessions which have nothing to concede.

Similarly, men who have businesses of their own that will in
course of time need a successor, and who are averse to fostering the Socialistic
tendencies of the age by taking the clerk of twenty-five or thirty years'
service into active partnership, are anxious that their sons should be ready to
step into the paternal shoes at such time as the paternal feet should be
withdrawn to the more comfortable environment of the list-slippers of
well-earned retirement, or the surgical boots of a gout-ridden old age. Hence
it is that many a young man who would be of priceless value to the community as
an autograph-collector, a mandolinist, a tenor vocalist, a maker of occasional
tables (so-called because they occasionally stand up, but more frequently
collapse), a poker-work expert, or any one of the hundred other picturesque
hobbies in which we indulge, is pitchforked on to an office-stool, presented
with a ledger, a ruler, a piece of blotting-paper, and an assortment of
different-coloured inks, and peremptorily instructed to make the most of the
opportunities Providence has given him.

Therefore, when we observe upon a friend's dining-room wall
an oleograph of Beachy Head enclosed in a dainty frame composed of acorns and
sea-shells ; when we find upon the floor a three-legged stool decorated with
painted robins and unripe apples ; when we remark lying open upon the piano
that soulful ballad, "Wink to Me Only with One Eye," let us not see
in these evidences of a misspent leisure, but rather the submerged potentialities
of a Grinling Gibbins, a Burne-Jones, or a Caruso.

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The Artistic Temperament

By
Ashley Sterne

Why a man who only has his hair cut
twice a year, whose fingers cry to heaven for a nail-brush and a manicurist,
and whose general behavior leaves so much to be desired should be said to
possess the Artistic Temperament is an inscrutable mystery. To the thinking
mind, length of hair, ill-kept hands, and slovenly manners suggest rather a
total lack of any temperament whatsoever, artistic or otherwise; for even an
inartistic temperament does not necessarily imply the disuse of the comb and
the soap. But we have so long been accustomed to regard the possession of
matted tresses and other eccentricities as the outward and visible tokens of
the fierce fire of genius which burns within that should a new poet, painter,
or musician appear on the artistic horizon with a sleek head redolent of
brilliantine, alabaster hands, and irreproachable manners, he would promptly be
branded as an impostor. Similarly, when we encounter an individual with ragged,
unkempt locks and a wild light gleaming in his eye, we at once assume him to be
an artistic genius, whereas in reality he may merely be a patriotic seaside
photographer who has been wandering around for the last six. months vainly
endeavoring to find a hairdresser that is not a relic of German barberism.

Of course, the genuine artistic
mind has its little peculiarities. One can hardly expect a person whose brain
is full of blank verse, complicated sonatas, or conceptions of triangular
shaped females with purple hair, lolling against expensive green sunsets, to
behave exactly as an ordinary man would whose thoughts flow upon more material
lines. It is a well-known fact that, at table, poets are particularly prone to
become so wrapped up in their own thoughts that the business of eating is
temporarily relegated to obscurity; and it is on record how one famous poet,
while seated at lunch with his family, suddenly threw down the steak with which
he had been absently toying, and gave utterance to the now celebrated, though
somewhat irregular metred, lines: —

"O that this too, too solid
flesh would melt,

Thaw, resolve itself into a
stew!"

In the same manner, a great painter
once became so absorbed with thoughts of a picture that he had long had in mind
that one evening at a dinner-party, oblivious to his surroundings, he commenced
to sketch upon the table-cloth, in mustard, tomato chutney, and mint sauce, a
rough study of what he ultimately developed into the most renowned picture of
the year. And in this connection it is interesting to note that this very
picture can be seen, together with many other noteworthy examples of modern
British art, of which we, as a nation, are so justly proud, on any Tuesday or
Friday in the private salon of its owner, Silas Q. Hunks, of Brawnville,
Chicago.

Here I have given instances of the
true Artistic Temperament at work, and such lapses from the strict code of
social etiquette, though perhaps a trifle disconcerting, are, at any rate,
understandable. But, unfortunately, the Artistic Temperament is often claimed
by those who have no more right to the distinction than has Von Tirpitz to the
Royal Humane Society's medal; and, consequently, this quaint and frequently
amusing trait develops into a mere excuse for indulging in discreditable
practices. It is not too much to say that the kerb-stones of Chelsea are literally
strewn with beggared tailors and insolvent artists' colormen whose unhappy condition
has been brought about by the disability of the pseudo-Artistic Temperament to
remember that "where there's a bill there's a pay." I, too, have
experienced maltreatment from it. I once
bought an alleged oil-painting from a so-called artist who got rid of his wares
by the simple process of peddling them from house to house. It wasn't the
slightest good to say that you didn't want pictures, as you didn't understand
anything about painting or its technique. Such an avowal would simply make him
stop and explain the mysteries of chiaroscuro, high lights, perspective, and so
forth, until at length you were compelled to buy a picture or else indulge in a
long and useless search for a policeman. By such means he succeeded in selling
me "Sunrise on Popocatepetl" for seven-and-six. I went and fetched
him half-a-sovereign, and he gave me half-a-crown change. It was not until the
following day that I discovered that the Artistic Temperament had prompted him
to clear off with my gold-mounted umbrella and plant me with a bad half-crown.
More over, I discovered that "Sunrise on Popocatepetl" was an
oleograph of Windsor Castle pasted upside down upon a cardboard mount. Truly
has someone said: "Ars est celare ar tem!" ("Art is concealed in
artfulness.")

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My Calligraphoscope

By
Ashley Sterne

The other day I had a most unhappy
experience. Through sheer inadvertence I tipped a railway porter, who had devoted
a good deal of energy to looking after me, with a half penny instead of a
shilling, the result being that I was favored with a recital of the principal
features in my character (coupled with trenchant sarcasms anent my
physiognomical ones) that quickly reduced me to a state of unenviable
melancholy. Even after I had discovered and adjusted my error, and the porter
had unreservedly withdrawn all the anathema he had hurled at me, I was not
cheered. I wondered if it were true that "first impressions are generally
correct," and, if so, whether I habitually made the same first impression
on others as I had made on the porter.

Full of vague misgivings I opened
my paper, and almost at once my eye caught an advertisement of one Codem, who
professed to tell character from handwriting. Though I have little faith in
such methods of defining one's traits (which are never employed for the purpose
of obtaining the characters of domestic servants), I nevertheless decided to
write to this seer, and find out in how far his diagnosis would compare with
the porter's. As soon as I reached home, therefore, I sent off a letter and a
few lines from one of Mr. Asquith's speeches which I had copied out with great
care as my "specimen," and begged Codem for a plain, unbiased character.
The next day it arrived, and ran as follows:—

(1) You are foolishly impetuous in
your conclusions. You address me as "Dear Sir," whereas I am a woman.

(2) You are devoid of all business
instincts. Had you any, you would have headed your letter "Dear Sir"
or "Dear Madam."

(3) The paper you enclosed, which
looks as if a spider with inky legs had walked up and down it, is, I presume,
the specimen of your ordinary writing. If so, I place you as belonging to the
literary profession. The thumb-mark in one corner helps to confirm this. (This
was a libel. If there was any thumb-mark it was made by Codem's thumb, not
mine.)

(4) You have omitted to dot any of
your "i's" and to cross any of your "t's"—unless you have chanced
to write a sentence containing neither of these letters. This betokens
stinginess, especially in the matter of ink; also slovenly habits. A word which
at first I took to be "tum-tum" is, I find on closer inspection,
presumably "ultimatum." If you were Foreign Secretary such ambiguity
would get you into trouble.

(5) I really cannot decipher any
thing else which even begins to look like a word, but—.

(6) A strong odor of cheap and
coarse tobacco pervades your correspondence. From this it is clear that you are
a person of low and vitiated tastes. (This was another libel. The cheap and
coarse tobacco was the direct result of my trying to live on half my income, as
officially advised.)

(7) Your memory and power of observation
are both atrocious. My fee, as advertised, is five shillings. You sent
sixpence. What do you think I am—a Limerick Competition? Kindly remit balance
per return.

When I had digested this summary of
my character I decided that I preferred the porter's. Deleted of its
swear-words, the latter's estimate of me, though coinciding at many points with
his competitor's, might easily have ranked as a satire which, properly edited,
would perhaps achieve a reputation second only to Juvenal's masterpieces in
this direction. Codem's was a heartless and unfeeling diatribe. However, I
thought I would show that lady that I had one redeeming feature, and so I sent
her a postal order for four-and-six, and forthwith set about remodelling my
hand writing on the most approved and virtuous pattern. Yesterday morning I was
busy copying in a copybook for the seventh consecutive time that famous
proverb, "Still horses run dark," when I received a letter from
Codem. In it she acknowledged my postal order, returned it, and expressed her
regret that, through an error, the wrong "character" had been sent to
me. The one I had already received should have been sent to a client in
Glasgow. She begged to enclose the correct one, and hoped that if I were
satisfied I would mention her name to my friends.

I eagerly perused her enclosure,
after which I tore up my copybook. According to Codem my character is not that
of a human being; it is that of an archangel.

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Confession Albums

By
Ashley Sterne

Writing of photograph albums
recently [cf. The Family Album, March 1916] has put me in mind of an other kind
of domestic album which, unfortunately, shows no sign of being withdrawn from
circulation. It is known as a "confession" album, and is expressly
designed for probing the innermost recesses of our friends' and relations'
secret souls by means of a series of intimate questions. The album consists of
a number of pages of different colors, ranging from the delicate pink hue of
the blanc-mange that is usually served at dances, and which is apparently
flavored with tooth-powder, to the pale green tint that is so often to be seen
on the face of passengers on the landing-pier at Dover when the Calais boat
comes in. These colors' are known as "art shades," probably for the
same reason a man whose front garden boasts an acacia tree promptly names his
house "Laburnum Villa." The book is very nicely bound in solid veal,
with solid gold edges, and on the cover in gold writing are the words
"Confession Album." Then on each page is printed a number of questions
which it is supposed to be a compliment to be requested to answer.

And very searching questions they
are, too. If correctly answered I dare swear that these privately-owned
confession albums would be a most valuable addition to the archives of the
C.I.D, at Scotland Yard. Therefore, when an unknown female admirer—as you say,
she was probably of unsound mind—recently sent me her album, accompanied by a
politely-worded note informing me of the paroxysms, of joy which would be hers if
I would kindly fill up a page, I determined that, while acceding to her
request, would nevertheless afford as
little clue as possible to my real nature. You see, I did not know my
correspondent, and she might possibly have been in the employ of Pinkerton's
for all I could tell. Here, then, is a list of the questions and my answers:

What is your age?—Can't say exactly,
as it varies from day to day.

How would you describe your temperament?—Don't
understand the word; but if you mean temperature, mine's 98.4 deg. Fahrenheit.

Whom do you consider the greatest
man in history?—Og, King of Bashan. [Deuteronomy
3:11:For only Og king of Bashan
remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron;
is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length
thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.]

Which do you consider the greatest
of Shakespeare's plays?—Dear old Charlie.

Whom do you consider the world's
greatest painter?—Winston Churchill.

Its greatest philosopher?—Axolotl. [Mexican
salamander]

Our greatest statesman?—Mr.
Ginnell. [From Punch, June 20th 1917:
Mr. Ginnell, M.P., is responsible for the statement that
"bringing an action against the police in Ireland is like bringing one
against Satan in hell."]

Have you any bad habits? —No, unless
you count drink, drugs and extravagance.

What are your politics?—See answer
to bad habits.

What in your opinion is the
greatest invention of the century?—Tango teas. [afternoon tea parties with
Tango dancing]

If you were not yourself who would
you like to be?—Crosse and Blackwell [purveyors of seafood sauces, chutneys, etc.].

You will admit that this is a
fairly comprehensive examination. You will also probably admit that my answers
were sufficiently evasive for the object I had in view. Be that as it may, I
could not help feeling that the wrong type of question had been asked. If I had
compiled the catechism I should have asked such ques tions as:

What is your favorite disease?

Which telephone number do you like
best?

What do you think of the equator?

How are they all at home?

Do you prefer Mercator's Projection
or the Obliquity of the Ecliptic?

When is a jar not a door?—and so forth.

Moreover, if I had sent such an
album to anyone to fill in I should have made a point of making myself au fait [fully
informed] with the laws of the nation first. My admirer's book reached me on
October 30, together with stamps for return. On November 2 I returned it, buy
postage, you remember, had then gone up—it cost me eightpence to get rid of it.

x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x

The Simple Life

By
Ashley Sterne

To every jaded mortal who is doomed
to a life of servitude in one or other of the "well-ventilated, commodious
offices" with which our big towns are honeycombed, there comes a time when
he feels he can no longer tolerate the excitements and artificialities or what
has been so truly termed "the strenuous life," and yearns instead, for
the care-free bucolic existence which his forefathers enjoyed, and which is
known to followers of Fabianism (and other eccentric cults suggestive of a
vegetable diet and tickly underclothing) as "the simple life."

This sensation, however, is not
inspired by any earnest on the part of the yearner to go through the
back-breaking process of cultivating the virgin soil with the ultimate idea of
subsisting entirely on the fruits thereof. He has no uncontrollable desire to
get up each morning at 4 a.m., and, armed with a rich variety of unwieldy
agricultural implements, to put in sixteen hours' heavy manual labor, conducive
only to profuse perspiration and violent thirst, upon that stratum of his
native land which as a rule, mainly consists of thistles, disused kettles, and
empty boots in an advanced stage of senile decay.

Nor would he be bursting with
enthusiasm to feed himself on those extraordinary dishes which strict simple
livers declare to be a sine qua non of simple life. He would scarcely wish to
banish forever all thoughts of, say, sausages, the very mention of which is
sufficient to bring the ruby blush to any strict Fabian's cheek, rendered
strangely pallid by years of feeding on the palest of bananas and the whitest
of butter-milk. He would not be content to walk barefooted all the year around,
a procedure from which the plea of chronic chilblains would not exempt him.

And, lastly, he would never expect
to be happy if his literary tastes were forcibly confined to the reading of
only such books as dealt with the principles of simple life cookery—e.g..
"Half Hours with a Brazil Nut," "Straight Talks to a Stuffed Marrow,"
"Imaginary Conversations With a Haricot Bean" or "Meditations
Upon a Cucumber-and-Glycerine Sandwich," varied occasionally by the perusal
of some of that mystical, elusive sort of poetry which chiefly consists of
adverbs and notes of interrogation.

His idea is rather to discard all
the drawbacks which living the simple life implies, and to retain all its obvious
benefits. That is to say, he would spend his days revelling in the open air of
the country instead of in the confined space and appalling draughts which is
what an estate agent means by a "well-ventilated, commodious office."
He would drink in the pure fresh winds of heaven instead of the intermittent
coffees and liqueurs without which the commercial life of our greatest cities
cannot apparently exist.

He would muse on the problem submitted
by the Book of Nature rather than on those propounded by a pass-book and
cash-book which for many years have remained resolutely dead to all attempts to
effect a reconciliation of their differences. He would listen to what Browning
calls "the C major life" as played by the instrumentalists of
Nature's own orchestra, instead of to the cacophonous noises emitted all day
long by motor-horns, police-whistles, and pedestrians knocked down by the
traffic. In short, he would return to that idyllic Arcadian simplicity which
free access to Nature, coupled with a hopelessly obsolete drainage system,
alone can grant.

But—make no mistake!—he is not
going to rise at some ridiculous hour in the morning to give his naked legs a
"dew-bath," or to milk the cow, a process which to the unskilled
means one per cent. of fluid in the designed receptacle and the remainder up
your sleeve. He is not going to contract a permanent crick in the back by
nurturing and tending vast masses of spring onions and turnip-tops when what
his soul longs for is a steak or a mixed grill.

No, the simple life for which he
hankers is that which a nice roomy cottage implies, with bath (h. and c).
electric light, a sufficient income (preferably unearned), clotted cream with
every meal, and three or four well trained servants whose duties it will be to
remove all the simple life's complexities and difficulties. And with all due
deference to those earnest disciples of that stricter sect which rejoice in
all-wool clothing and lentil cutlets, he does not appear to me to be a bad
judge.